How to Use WhatsApp Business API for Educational Institutes?

The education industry is evolving, growing, and adopting new dimensions, owing to technology and customer demands. This is now a dynamic and highly accessible industry, and we have seen its true potential in the past pandemic climate.  In the current era, students wish for quick, effortless conversation. While they’re asking about colleges, courses, and waiting for the results, a real-time engagement is necessary.

Old methods, including Email and SMS, are usually too slow or impersonal to update students interested. One such important and astute change is following a conversation platform like WhatsApp Business API for the education industry. Being one of the popular tools with 2 billion active users, it engages students where they already are – on their phones. In this article, you’ll know how to use a popular tool to increase CTR and business growth.

Why Use WhatsApp Messaging for Education?

WhatsApp Business API is a practical tool introduced by Facebook in 2018, enabling companies to broadcast and receive unlimited messages to a huge audience. It’s launched to improve customer experience, handle support, and enhance growth on WhatsApp. The tool used for edutech makes the most of the message platform’s features to market educational services.

It gives a direct and convenient tool for educational industries to engage with students, parents, and educators, simplifying interactions. Leverage WhatsApp chatbot for colleges, schools, and universities tasks to employ a higher level of personalization in their messaging, with reminders, updates, and targeted messages.

Nowadays, WhatsApp Business API is becoming very popular for many reasons:

• Accessibility – WhatsApp is the most used application. It can be easily accessed by students and counselors to represent the college or suggest courses.
• Cost-effective – Adhering to the vast usage around the globe, WhatsApp is the right choice for institutes and universities.
• Group messaging – WhatsApp Business API allows sending bulk messages to communicate with prospects easily at one time.
• Media sharing – Counsellors, teachers, and students can communicate with each other as well as share messages, including images, videos, documents, class materials, assignments, and other educational materials.
• Ease of use – WhatsApp’s easy-to-use UI makes it easy for users to access the tool.

Benefits of WhatsApp Marketing for Educational Institutes

Educational institutes looking to reach a wide audience must use WhatsApp Business API to get the flexibility to pick the preferred messaging tool with advanced features scaled to specific goals.

Unlock the potential possibilities for marketing and lead generation through WhatsApp. We will discuss the benefits of API below and how it helps the institutes with their student-capturing leads and nourishing them.

1. Automated replies

WhatsApp business enables the institutes to set up automated replies to general queries from respective students, like information on admission requirements, tuition fees, and event details.

2. Lead generation

Educational institutes can leverage WhatsApp to design a lead generation form over their website or social media channels that allows students to submit their contact details and get automated follow-up messages through WhatsApp.

3. Customized engagement

A simple but effective method to nourish is customized communication. Interaction with a respective student is customized by leveraging their names and other information grasped during inquiry submission.

4. WhatsApp broadcast messages

Authorities of educational institutes can use the technology to send WhatsApp broadcast messages to a vast group of students about important announcements, upcoming events, seminars, and updates on the required programs.

5. Lead scoring

WhatsApp Business API enables tracking the engagement of prospective students and adds WhatsApp as a standard to generate lead scores. 

6. Campaign tracking

This is simple to monitor the performance of lead nurturing campaigns and measure their effectiveness by analyzing the ratio of leads generated, the conversion rate, and the overall ROI.

How the Education Industry Uses WhatsApp Business API

The education industry can use effective tools in different ways to enhance interaction and simplify processes. There are a few use cases:

1. Use automated notification templates 

Have you got the student’s admission form for the next semester to enroll in your university? If not, then why are you waiting? Send them customized messages on WhatsApp to grasp their interest with helpful information for your facilities and institutions. 

2. Initiate engagement marketing campaigns

Do you still need convincing to convert your candidates? However, it would help if you did not lose them or give up without trying. Utilize WhatsApp to send messages to pique their preferences by sending regular updates, news announcements, and reminders. This provides a chance to re-engage with students in a personalized and interactive manner. 

3. Send class schedules

Equipping timetables of the lectures for students is the most significant difficulty for teachers. This plan has to work for students and teachers, and if the study material is placed offline, you would have to maintain the place for it. WhatsApp is not only a tool to send class schedules but also to share fast updates of changes, rescheduling, and cancellations for the sessions.

4. Request student feedback

Feedback is the way to tell the business about the experience of service and identify the services that need to be improved. Using such a tool, you can collect productive feedback from prospects on the quality of the lectures and tutorials, the student experience, and much more.

5. Give an immediate reply

Enable the students to engage with the universities and receive more details about the institutes on WhatsApp, and satisfy them with immediate replies.

6. Create new leads

Students and parents are devastated by WhatsApp marketing content on the internet and are longing for human resources to help them make the right choice. Apart from trying to create leads with online ads or landing pages, you can convert them on WhatsApp and interact in direct two-way communication. Such interactions enable the sharing of relevant details and follow-up with interested students to enhance enrollment.

7. Simplify the application process

The application method could be less demanding for your staff and students. Various paperwork and manual processes can make it time-consuming and challenging for those who are involved. You can update the candidates on the status of their admission application, schedule an interview, manage FAQs, and address any problems that the students may have.

Why Choose Getgabs To Promote Education Business?

Getgabs, as a WhatsApp Business Solution provider, offers the integration of an API to transform how educational universities leverage the technology. It fosters customized nurturing through interactive broadcasts and sending real-time updates to students. 

This is how Getgabs helps the education organization go to the next level with WhatsApp Business API:

1. Get a verified badge 

Getgabs offers a blue tick verified badge for the business account. Educational institutes can get verified to elevate their brand recall. Getting personalized messages from a verified sender with an authentic business will support the candidate’s decision to join your educational institutes.

2. Automated replies and broadcast messages

Customize broadcast messages with a tap of a button, depending on the student’s position in the enrollment journey, and enable them to communicate with the account. Send application status, deadline reminders, exam timetable, tour schedules, and the due fee for the course, etc.

3. Automate the message for the enrolment journey

Through the WhatsApp business API, institutes can automate the nurturing efforts by sending creative messages according to the prospect’s position in the enrolment process and tailor the communication better than always.

4. Boost conversation with rich media messaging

Engage your student in a rich media experience through videos and images, and send extensive insights into branches, libraries, sports, hostels, placement calls, campuses, scholarships, student communities, etc.

5. Create and save conversation templates

Effortlessly design and create interactive templates on the panel and send them anytime, anywhere. Have your repetitive interactions, such as welcome messages and application submission reminder messages, optimized to be used anytime.

6. Automate engagement with a WhatsApp chatbot

Give your candidates 24/7 contextual engagement on the web, WhatsApp, and Facebook with the conversational WhatsApp chatbot. Through real-time, personalized contact and engagement with potential students, WhatsApp Business API enables educational institutions to efficiently nurture leads, which can help boost enrollment and enhance the overall student experience. 

Ways to Promote WhatsApp Among Students

What makes WhatsApp so appealing is how simple it is to use and how far it can reach. WhatsApp removes geographic restrictions by using just a smartphone and an internet connection, opening up a world of educational possibilities.

Here are three strategies you may use to inform kids that they can contact your school via WhatsApp:

1. WhatsApp chat button: By including a WhatsApp chat button on your website’s primary pages, students will be able to initiate a WhatsApp conversation with only one click!
2. Click-to-chat: When a WhatsApp click-to-chat button is added to your Facebook advertisement, it will instantly link potential customers to your business.
3. QR codes: Create free WhatsApp QR codes, then scan them to launch an automatic ad when you scan print advertisements, brochures, or leaflets to open WhatsApp chat automatically.

Conclusion

In such a competitive world, the WhatsApp business solution is not an option for student engagement – but a necessity. Whether you’re running an educational consultancy, university, or edutech platform, the ability to connect immediately, personally, and at scale is what sets it apart.

Having higher open rates, quick replies, and the potential to enhance CTR by 30% or more, WhatsApp can modify your entire student messaging strategy. 

What’s the next step? If you’re not using WhatsApp Business API, use it now. Integrate it with your CRM, customize messages, and begin designing real connections that change. Make the move to Getgabs (formerly NoPaperForms) Education CRM right now to foster effectively!